Blood
by minnesotalake
Summary: Erin and Sam are together alone in the world. we follow them before and with the prison group... I think I will do a lot with them on their own before they join the group, I have a lot of ideas I want to get through first


1

I take a wet cloth and wipe the blood from his face. I have to rinse the rag a couple of times to get him all clean. I look over at him, his face glows from the light of the lantern, he looks tired but still gives me a small smile.

"Come here," he says as he rinses off the cloth for the third time. I slide over closer to him and push the hair away from my face. He tries to be gentle but it's really caked on, so he tries harder.

"Sorry," he laughs.

"No worries," I exhale. I know I should be a little more grateful for him washing my face, but I'm so tired I'm not even going to try tonight.

Tonight we are in the middle of nowhere, what a surprise. We figure that they can't get to us if there was no one here in the first place. We are in a tent, which is okay, but the only way I can get it up at night is by telling myself that we are on a camping trip. We don't do much after we get into the tent but set up, look at our supplies, somewhat clean up, and just try to get some sleep. Sleep is a big word to me, I haven't had a sound night of sleep in a month. I can never get to sleep but when I finally do I have nightmares that wake me up again and again. I usually just lie there and listen. Listen for what? Anything. His breathing, the dogs and their dreams (or nightmares, who knows about them) the wind, and of course: the dead.

2

I don't really know what happened, it happened so fast. I was in school and this kid just went crazy. No one knew what was wrong with him, he was just acting like an animal. Some people thought that he had rabies, what did I hear on the radio earlier that morning? Something like a bum off the street attacked someone, but I hadn't heard anything since. Then the Army came. They quarantined half the school, my sister was there, and I guess shot and killed because they were exposed. I couldn't think of what to do next. All I could hear was the _pop pop pop_ of the guns ripping apart my schoolmates and sister. My head was spinning and my ears were ringing, then I was being shook. I was brought back to the reality unfolding around me; shots, screaming and a smile. I looked at him, he was glad that I was out of the trance. He hugged me, held my face in his hands.

"Let's go," he screamed over the commotion.

"But I don't know if she is okay," tears streamed down my face.

"We can't stay," he grabbed my arm and led me out. He had to drag me across the parking lot, I seemed to forget how to walk. We made it to his red truck and got in. I sat down.

"We don't know if she made it," I screamed.

"I'm sorry but we can't go back, we both know there's no way that anyone could have survived that slaughter." I hunched over and sobbed to the floor. He rubbed my back and it was actually really nice.

"I want to go home," I hiccupped.

"That sounds nice, you have to get me there so you are going to have to get up and show me where to go," I sat up and wiped my runny nose on my sleeve, and brushed my hair away from my face. We left the parking lot along with many other scared people. Luckily my house was a short drive away and we were home in a matter of minutes. I let us in and called for my mom not knowing if she was home from work yet; no answer. I picked up the phone, dead. I tried the TV, dead. I flipped a switch, nothing. I started to cry again.

"What do we do?" I questioned.

"Well I'm not leaving you here alone," he replied. "Let's stick around to see if your parents make it home." I went downstairs to my bedroom. I got into my bed and hid myself underneath the covers and started to cry. I cried until the tears ceased to flow, then there was nothing but a numbness.

3

Needless to say, my parents never came home. I showed him the camping gear in the garage and he loaded his truck up.

"Do you have any guns?" He questioned. "I think if the army thought of them as such a threat, then so should we,"

"Yeah, let me get what I can find, I think that we have a lot of shells and stuff in the mudroom," I went back into the house and went into my parent's room where our guns and key for their locks were. I looked around, the bed was still not made and it looked so normal. I looked at the pictures hanging on the wall and the tears streamed down my face. All our memories, I couldn't just leave them behind like everything else. I paged through the albums taking the family pictures not caring so much for the pictures of the scenery (except for the ones I just couldn't leave). It was hard, seeing my whole life in pictures and deciding which ones I was going to take and which ones I was going to leave behind forever. I came across one of my mom and dad looking at each other and I put my face in my hands, this was too hard.

I didn't know he was there until his hand was on my back again.

"Hey, I know this is really hard okay, I'm just going to take the guns and put them into the truck and we can stay here until you are ready, okay?"

"Thank you" I sobbed, it was all I could say. He took the guns and left the house; I heard the front door close. I went across the hall to the bathroom, blew my nose and wiped my eyes. I was back in the room going through the pictures when he came back in and carrying my dog, Lincoln, who I neglected to check up on before now. I felt bad and started to cry again as he passed him to me.

"The little guy was whining, he scared me," He smiled, and sat down on the ground with me.

"Do you want help, it might be faster with two people"

"Yeah, that would be nice, I just want pictures of people unless you like a scenery one". We worked in silence, occasionally I had to answer a question.

"Why is there a picture of an outhouse?" He questioned with a smile on his face.

"Well it's at a campground up north that we have been going to for years and this one year it was so stinky that it was miserable to walk by it, let alone go to the bathroom and it was just so funny how we would hold our breath and put our head into our shirts. It's not that exciting but some of the best times are just little things, right?"

"Yeah it's funny how you always want things to be perfect but it's the imperfect things that we remember and have the best memories of" He looked at the dog and gave him a pat on the head. I looked out the window and I got a look at the setting the sun. It was beautiful with lots of orange and pink.

"It's getting dark out," I noticed.

"Yeah, we might as well stay here for the night, get things organized and come up with a plan and leave tomorrow."


End file.
